It's called the "Nest
Protect." The Protect is supposed to be a more intuitive,
simpler, and better looking version of the standard smoke and
carbon monoxide detector, which can be
bought for $32 on Amazon.

Instead of blaring an alarm at the slightest smoke, the Nest
Protect is smart enough to figure out if it's just, say smoke
from burnt bacon, and then warn you verbally. If it is just bacon
smoke, then you can wave your hand in front of the Protect, and
it will shut off.

Other features that Nest thinks makes the Protect worth the
premium: It has a center ring that lights up in the dark
providing a night light of sorts. The ring color also adjusts to
let you know if the battery is low on juice. You also get a text
if the battery needs replacement, which is much better than the
mystery squeal that comes from most smoke detectors when the
battery is dead.

This is the second product from Fadell and Nest. The first
product was the Nest thermostat, which is a sleek thermostat that
analyzes a users behavior to adjust the temperature in a
house.

The thermostat and the smoke detector are going to work together
to get a better sense of how people are moving around in their
homes. It sounds a little
creepy, but once you get over the creep factor, it's actually
quite useful.

Nest is trying to create an always connected, intelligent home
that can save energy and in the case of the smoke detector, save
lives.

Fadell was at Apple when it built the iPhone. He likened the
Protect to the iPhone in
an interview with Wired, saying, "When we set out to
build the iPhone, people said we should buy a cell phone design
team and apply the Apple magic to it ... I said, no—what we’re
doing is building hardware, software, and services, with a little
bit of phone in it. That’s what we’re doing here at Nest. Protect
has a little bit of smoke and CO detector in it, but you really
need those other things—algorithms and sensors and connectivity
and apps and data—to reinvent the category. Disruptive technology
isn’t a better sensor, it’s about this whole network of
things."